Page 57 of The Fire Line

It was a poor plan by any practical standard.

Harris had made it anyway.

He did not generally ride toward a known hazard just to see whether it would burn him.

Apparently this week he had made an exception.

* * *

By midmorning, the trees opened onto a broad high-country slope. Green held longer there than in the valley, though dry seed heads had begun rising through the grass. Pale shelves of granite broke near the ridge, and cattle grazed far enough away to resemble dark stones scattered across the land.

Harris dismounted beside a weathered trough supplied by a narrow line disappearing beneath the hillside. Jay followed. The moment his boots touched the ground, his legs informed him that the previous four hours had involved muscles whose existence he had considered theoretical. He stood beside Red, waiting for his knees to remember their contractual obligations.

Harris looked over.

“Don’t.”

“Didn’t say anything.”

“You were about to.”

“You’re gonna hurt tomorrow.”

“I already hurt today. I’m ahead of schedule.”

Harris’s mouth moved.

Jay straightened with what he hoped read as dignity rather than significant lower-body dysfunction. “Also, for the record, I’m doing extremely well.”

“Yup.”

“That sounded supportive.”

“Wasn’t.”

“Good. I’d hate for the mountains to change you.”

They worked at the spring for nearly two hours. Harris showed Jay the old spring box, the exposed line, and the places where groundwater had once seeped into September but now disappeared by August during dry years.

There was no cinematic catastrophe. No dead cattle or dramatic cracked earth waiting for a drone shot. Only a system producing less water than it once had and a family quietly rearranging an entire operation around the reduction.

Jay liked that. Damage rarely announced the point when it became permanent. People bought hay, moved cattle sooner, and called the accumulating losses adaptation because the alternative sounded too much like defeat.

Harris crouched beside the spring box and cleared dry grass from an old valve with his bare hands. Jay framed the dirt beneath his nails, the pale wire scar crossing one wrist, and thick fingers moving carefully around the corroded connection.

Harris glanced toward the camera. Two weeks earlier, he would have asked why the hell Jay needed a close-up of his hands. Instead, he shifted six inches.

“Here. You need the valve too.”

Jay adjusted the frame. “Oh yeah. Perfect.”

He got the shot.

There were marriages with less growth.

He kept that observation to himself.

They ate lunch against a slab of granite warmed by the sun. Della had packed roast-beef sandwiches with horseradish strong enough to qualify as chemical warfare, two apples, cookies, and enough napkins to dress a moderate wound.